it is finished

It’s July 1st: one week after our original closing date. I’m 1100 miles from the house we’ve been trying to sell for 4 years, and I just learned it is over. Mortgage paid off. New owner. Confirmed via email to the agent with whom I left a limited Power of Attorney.

The move last Friday was miserable, but aren’t all moves? I got the truck about 9:30am. Movers were supposed to come at 10:30am after the 9am closing was to be finished, but I learned the night before that it would be postponed. I’d reserved 3 men for 4 hours, which was an extra man and an extra hour above what I needed the last time I moved in 2004. I figured we’d have time to unpack some boxes and go to bed early.

We returned the truck at 1:30am.

It poured rain for the SECOND loading of the 24′ truck that I was certain would be bigger than I needed for our 3 bedrooms of crap. It kept pouring as we loaded 5 vanloads of pictures and electronics.

After sleeping 5 hours, we drove 6 hours to Grayton Beach, FL for my cousin’s wedding and a 3-day escape from the maze of cardboard we left in the rented brick ranch that will be “home” for the foreseeable future.

Somewhere along I-85, just south of Atlanta, this came from the back row:

Maddie: “When we come back from Florida, can we go back to the house with the red door, where my friends live, instead?”
Pretty Bride: “Remember? We’re going to be in our ‘in-between’ house for a few months, and then we’ll find our ‘forever house,’ right?Maddie: “But what about the brown house with the pool?”PB: “We didn’t get that one.”Maddie: “But the house we are in now has nowhere to sleep!”

It was humbling. For years we’d laughed at friends who parked in their driveways because of garages full of junk, considering ourselves efficient for the size of our family. Almost minimalists, even, with our semi-annual trips to the thrift store to offload surplus.

Seeing two truckloads of shit everywhere was a reality check. A quite unpleasant one.

Me: We need to get rid of more stuff. More than the flood did. More than the garage sale did. And more than our thrift store drop offs did.

But that is for another day.

Saturday to Monday at the beach were great. Tuesday in the office afterward was productive. And on Wednesday, we put 6 people onto an airplane and flew to Boston for our family’s first pure vacation in 6 years (i.e., not a conference, wedding, family reunion, or the like).

15 responses to “it is finished”

It’s great news!
I am intensely jealous of your Boston trip. I miss that place! yes – the entire place. Hope you’re going to the Cape, too!
I am a fiend about getting rid of junk. If you do it now, that’ll be less stuff for the next move. For now, though – enjoy the vacation! Happy 4th!

Congrats! I can only imagine the elation you must be feeling knowing that settlement in through. We’re putting our little prison back on the market next week. Round 3 for us. If it doesn’t sell this time I’m thinking jingle mail for Christmas 🙂

@SFD, We moved to a rental house for a bit, so that we can patiently wait on a great deal on a great home in which to, hopefully, spend the next 20 years. We decided that we would move out even if you closing fell through–which it did–but then it happened after all, a week after it was supposed to happen (and a week after we moved out). So, all worked out!